One would only have to imagine, say, a 50-year-old Anglo-Saxon male standing up and spouting the kind of aggressive and puerile social and political jargon we constantly hear from Ann Coulter to realize how ridiculous her commentary actually is. Last month, I had the good fortune of attending one of Miss Coulter's infamous talks at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Washington, DC. Hers was the most well-attended speech of the entire conference, beating out other, eloquent conservatives like Senators Frist, Cornyn, and Santorum; Phillis Schlafly, George Will, Robert Novak, and Newt Gingrich. As I and a couple of other fellow Harvard students sat in attendance, we could only recoil as Miss Coulter was introduced to the tune of tawdry '80s dance music and proceeded to label Islamic leaders "rag-heads" and to joke about her temptation to "take a shot at Bill Clinton." Her speech, if you can call it that—it was really little more than a progression of hyperbolic sound bites—did not elicit the most vigorous exercise in scholarly engagement from the audience. Many, it seems, were there to be titillated, not to think.

It is not too much to say that Ann Coulter is a good entertainer. But to a majority of people at CPAC, Miss Coulter held heroic status. If this lady, who embodies almost all that is wrong with contemporary political discourse, is one of the most admired conservative leaders, what does that say about the conservative movement as a whole?

There is good reason, I think, for why Ann Coulter was not nearly as appealing to most Harvard students present as she was to most attendees. Forgoing populist pretensions, many a Harvard conservative would probably take preference in branding himself a more intellectual conservative than the average Republican voter. This is, after all, allegedly an elite educational institution, and Miss Coulter's obnoxious simplicity makes conservatism into a parody of itself, at least for any educated audience that listens to her. Which is why it is baffling that the Harvard Republican Club has actively sought, and on two recent occasions, played host to Miss Coulter. What can bringing her to Harvard's campus possibly hope to accomplish? Her simplistic abstractions and highly offensive manner cannot possibly be of much benefit to an academic community, aside from preaching to the converted and simply enraging those who really need the convincing.

Modern ideas of the political left treasure touchy-feely autonomy as the principal moral guideline. Conservatives recognize that there is more to the glue of humanity than simply respecting the rights of others and feeling happy. While the true conservative is compassionate, he also recognizes that there is more to compassion than respecting another man's autonomy and insuring proper sustenance.

It was first and foremost an intellectual movement that laid the foundations of modern conservatism, in the watershed moment of Barry Goldwater's presidential bid. And that election's outcome—Goldwater lost in 49 states—showed that the ordinary, average guy was not voting Republican. The welfare state promised (and continues to promise) the common man many things and for a long time won his enduring affection. Today, it would be widely conceded that a shift has occurred. The Left alienated its religious followers. A new evangelism fueled conservatism's growth. And now, the most popular advocate of the ideology is not William F. Buckley but Ann Coulter.

Coulter has certainly been effective at appealing to the common man. Her rhetoric and her aggressive yet witty take on the world bypasses reason in favor of appealing to the senses—doing exactly what the Left had been very successful at, yet ultimately failed. But Coulter uses contempt for other people as her motivating factor, rather than contempt for a priori principles in general. Notice how almost all of her rhetoric involves an "us versus them" mentality. Miss Coulter is essentially rallying people behind the demonization of other human beings—a dire sin. This methodology is not in step with truth and certainly works very poorly in winning over liberals. And while conservatives may now get more fired up about how silly those liberals are, they may quickly abandon their beliefs in favor of a liberal ideology, as in the end, complete moral autonomy is simply a lot more fun than doctrinal moral obligations—universal truths or not. In order to win the Left over, we must instead appeal to reason—again.

The driving force of the West's cultural degradation is the dominance of carnality over reason, autonomy over transcendental truth. We have reached a point where our enormous wealth and prosperity has made it such that the simplified truth that the church had been successful at guiding communities with no longer holds the sway that it used to. And whereas, once past the superficial level, the church's doctrinal system has roots carved deep within reason and transcendental truths, Ann Coulter's attempts to use simple abstractions to promote a quasi-conservatism are only dimly connected to reason, and her use of the tool of contempt is a violation of truth. In the end, they will likely result in the strengthening of the liberal movement, rather than a weakening.

When apologists of liberalism start talking nonsense—as they often do—it is much more effective to explain why what they are saying is nonsense rather than to simply insult their dignity. The former method tends to be much more effective in winning new recruits, and one can still be firm in rhetoric and conviction. In the world of contemporary political discourse, where politicians are known only for their sound bites, and where negativity is the norm, perhaps an appeal to reason is just what the doctor ordered.